Kraken expands into payments plumbing

Kraken buying Reap shows that crypto exchanges are moving upstream from trading into the plumbing of global business payments. Kraken already has the hard part, which is liquidity and fiat to stablecoin conversion at scale. Reap adds the business workflow on top, cards, treasury movement, and payment routing, so Kraken can earn not just when someone trades crypto, but whenever a company spends, settles, or moves dollars through stablecoin rails.

• Kraken has the scale to use payments as an extension of its exchange, not a separate bet. Revenue reached about $2.2B in 2025, up 33% YoY, on about $2T in platform transaction volume. Reap lets that liquidity power card swipes, payouts, and cross border settlement flows that start outside the trading app.
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• Airwallex is the clearest fintech comparison because it already sells the full business workflow. Businesses use Airwallex to hold balances, convert currencies, issue cards, reimburse employees, and collect money locally. By April 2026 it had reached about $1.3B in annualized revenue, with cards and payments driving over half of gross profit.
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• The valuation gap reflects different stories. Kraken and Airwallex traded around 7x to 8x forward revenue because they are already large scaled operators. Mesh at about 39x is being priced as an infrastructure winner earlier in the stack, with investors betting it can become the neutral routing layer that exchanges, wallets, and processors plug into rather than a single endpoint product.
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The next phase is a land grab for who owns stablecoin payment distribution. Kraken is assembling a full stack operator model, Airwallex is extending fiat fintech into stablecoin adjacent workflows, and Mesh is positioning as the connective tissue between them. If stablecoin payments keep moving into cards, payroll, and cross border B2B flows, the highest value layer will be the one that controls routing and partner access.